Google announces Analytics updates

Google announced on Tuesday that its Google Analytics Web site-tracking tool has been improved with a slew of new features for enterprise-class users.

To start things off, Google announced that it has added the option for users to measure user engagement and branding success. The company said users will be able to "to set thresholds for Time on Site and Pages per Visit."

With the help of a new feature called Advanced Table Filtering, Analytics users will now be able to filter content more effectively and view that content in a table. According to Google, users can "filter thousands of keywords" to find, for example, "just the keywords with a bounce rate less than 30 percent and that referred at least 25 visits."

Going mobile
Google is also looking towards mobile phones. Analytics will track traffic to the user's mobile Web site. According to Google, whether or not the device visitors use to access the mobile site has JavaScript running won't matter, which means most mobile phones will be supported. That said, users who want to track mobile traffic will need to add "a server-side code snippet" to their mobile site. Google said the code will be made available in the coming weeks.

Continuing on its mobile focus, "iPhone and Android mobile-application developers can now also track how users engage with apps, just as with tracking engagement on a Web site," Google said.

For those users who want more capable usage data than simple page views and unique visitors, Google has added a Multiple Custom Variables option. Users can now "define and track visitors according to visitor attributes, session attributes, and by page-level attributes. This feature isn't currently available to Analytics users. It will be making its way to all user accounts "in the coming weeks," Google said.

Intelligence, anyone?
Perhaps the most interesting announcement coming from Google is the company's contention that Analytics can now "tell you what to pay attention to."

Dubbed Analytics Intelligence, Google's new tool will analyze traffic data and alert users when there is a "significant" change in data patterns. Although the company didn't define "significant," it did say that if it sees a "300 percent surge in visits from YouTube referrals" or "bounce rates of visitors from Virginia dropped by 70 percent two weeks ago," users would be alerted.

Since so-called "intelligent" tracking can get a little annoying at times, Google has also implemented a Custom Alerts feature, allowing users to tell the service what to watch for. According to Google, users can set "daily, weekly, and monthly triggers on different dimensions & metrics, and be notified by e-mail or right in the user interface when the changes actually occur." Like many of the other features Google announced, Analytics Intelligence will make its way to Analytics accounts in the coming weeks.

If you're interested in learning more or seeing some of these features in action, click here.